Glitch
by Kgirl1
Summary: She knew she had to be more than what they called her. All she needed was a chance to prove it.


**Hi everyone! So, I just watched the movie literally fifteen minutes ago and there was something I noticed about Vanellope's home so that I just had to write this! Note: I didn't make up the racer's names, believe it or not. Did take a little research though! Also, I barely even scrolled through the first page of fics in this fandom to make sure none had this title, so if anyone has used/is using this idea right now, I don't mean to copy! However, I hope you like!**

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**Glitch.**

It was an ugly word. It was an ugly name to be called, yet it stuck to her like taffy.

_The other citizens of Sugar Rush probably don't even know my name._

She didn't _want_ to be a glitch. She had never done anything wrong, or hurt anybody. All she had ever wanted to do was race.

That dream was almost as distant as her life before she was the **glitch**. She didn't remember it, in fact no one did. Everyone blamed it on a restart. All anyone remembered was the beginning.

It had started as a race. Vanellope found herself in a car, one she barely remembered now. She had been a glitch for so long…The other races had been there too; lined up in their cars at the starting line.

Taffyta.

Candlehead.

Gloyd.

Rancis.

Snowanna.

Crumbelina.

Swizzle.

Adorabeezle.

Jubileena.

Minty.

It was so odd. She remembered their names, their cars, their skills. But…who were they? On the inside, that is. Vanellope had no real memory of these people, but she did have one instinct inside her, and it was telling her to win.

_Right. Winning. I can do that._

This was all familiar to her. Natural. She was programmed to do this.

But…who was starting the race?

"Presenting his royal Highness King Candy." Sour Bill's grumble was at least familiar, but the person he had introduced was not. Everyone looked up in astonishment to the center podium, where Sour Bill stood slumped as usual. It was the man next to him that they had never seen before. The man stepped forward and began speaking with grandeur.

"I, King Candy-"

"King Candy?" Vanellope muttered to herself. "Who in the name of gumballs is King Candy?"

"The ruler of Sugar Rush-"

"Ruler?" She whispered again in confusion. This didn't make any sense.

"Would like to congratulate you all on being a part of our race today!" The man cheered, and there was confused but automatic clapping. "Now, remember, this is your ONE chance to participate in a free race! After that, the golden coin policy will be in full effect!"

As if to demonstrate this, the King pulled a coin from his pocket and tossed it onto the platform, where it was promptly flipped into the air and deposited in the golden cup. The name 'King Candy' lit up on the roster with an electronic _ping_, and everyone oohed and ahhed. This was an entirely new system to them.

_At least, I think it's new._ Vanellope frowned. It was in her programming and everyone else's to obey a ruler. Vanellope herself had always preferred a democracy, but without this man, who would be in charge? They had to listen to him. The game would spiral into disorder otherwise, or at least that was what they were coded to fear. Coin policy or not, she had no choice.

"Alright racers!" King Candy had found himself a car and was lined up with the rest of them. "Start your engines!"

Vanellope reached to do his bidding, but her car was like nothing she had ever seen. She didn't recognize a single mechanism. She panicked, pressing buttons randomly, but nothing worked. No one else was having trouble.

"On your mark!"

Every engine but hers roared.

"Get set!"

She pressed every sequence of button she could think of in one last, final attempt.

"GO!"

The racers zipped off, but she remained, alone and ashamed. She continued to jam her hands all over the controls, feeling more and more helpless and building more and more anxiety until finally-

Her entire body convulsed, flashing with blue pixels and then back to normal with a horrific jolt. Her eyes drew wide as her body seemed to fly into a million pieces and then back into one. It wasn't…painful. It was more…disorienting. She didn't feel fully put back together again, and she realized in horror what had just happened.

_Did I just…__**glitch?**_

Her jaw dropped in terror. She wasn't a **glitch**! She couldn't be! Vanellope knew she didn't remember a thing before the beginning of that race but she knew she wasn't a _**glitch!**_

The crowd seemed to fall silent as it happened again, that horribly cold feeling of flying apart and being smashed back together. Vanellope was ashamed. She ran from the immobile car, from the sugary track, from the prying eyes, in tears, and hid.

It seemed to take hours before the racers finally crossed the finish line.

"And the winner is, King Candy!"

The King looked positively exuberant. He jumped up and down, accepting the golden coin as trophy and grinning from ear to ear.

Taffyta had taken second, and Candlehead third. The King was distracted from his cheering momentarily when his eyes roamed the crowd and found the abandoned car.

"What's this?" He stepped down from the winner's platform to inspect it. "A runaway racer?"

"That's mine!" Vanellope ran out onto the track and exclaimed. "I couldn't get it to start!"

"Um, Vanellope, like duh?" Taffyta rolled her eyes and pressed a single green button with her index finger. The engine roared to life, and Vanellope's lower lip trembled.

"But…but-" She looked at the started car in dismay. Vanellope had tried that button a hundred times. "I swear…"

"Nice move, Vanellope." Taffyta and Candlehead, who had joined her, both snickered. Vanellope's eyes filled with frustrated tears.

"It wasn't working, I swear!" She yelled, stamping her foot on the ground.

It happened again. She shuddered and pixelated blue once more, and the assembled racers gasped.

"Oh my sweet peppermint swirls!" Taffyta shrieked. "Did you just _**GLITCH?!**_"

Her outcry sent the crowd into a panic, and King Candy struggled to appease the situation.

"People, please! I'm sure we'll have this all sorted out in just a minute!" He pleaded to the panicked spectators, then turned to glare at Vanellope.

"You. My castle. _Now_."

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Vanellope had a vague sense of familiarity as she entered the castle, but she shook it off. King Candy drove the same car he had raced in straight through the doors and up to his throne, backing the crown-shaped bumper right into the straight-backed chair.

"I'm remodeling. Soon the end will fit right in!" He explained merrily, as if nothing was wrong, and Vanellope gave him a weak smile.

"Right. So, Vanillip, is it?" The King began from his car/throne.

"Um, actually, it's Vanellope. Von Schweetz." Vanellope called from the floor. She felt very exposed standing there, but the King hadn't offered her a place to sit.

"Right, right." King Candy murmured. "So! Vanellope!" He straightened in his chair and drove the car down from the throne so that he sat right in front of her. "Have you ever experienced one of these…**glitches,** before?"

"No!" Vanellope exclaimed vehemently, but then she reconsidered, slumping. "Well, not that I remember." She admitted, dragging her toe along the sugary floor.

"Hmm. I see." King Candy stroked his chin, driving the car in slow circles around her. "And are you in control of these **glitches**?" Every time he says it she feels it like a sting.

"Well…no." Vanellope bit her lip, trying to turn around in order to retain eye contact with the ever-moving car. "B-but I mean-"

"This is very bad news." King Candy muttered to himself in thought. "Very bad news indeed."

"I can always try-" Vanellope tried to convince him, but he was lost in his own thoughts.

"What is to be done?" The King continued to murmur.

"I really think that-" Vanellope tried to cut in again, but he didn't hear a word.

"And the game…"

"Would you just listen to me?!" She demanded angrily, and once more those blue pixels rippled through her. She was growing accustomed to it now, the feeling of falling into thousands of pieces and colliding back into one in less than a nanosecond. King Candy screeched the car to a stop and looked at her in great dismay.

"Vanellope," He began gently, "Do you know what will happen if a player tries to race with you?"

She furrowed her brow and shook her head no.

"I'm afraid that, if you…you know, **glitch**," He said the word in a hushed tone. "Well…the players might think something is wrong with the game. We could be put _out of order_, Vanellope. Sent to live in Game Central Station. Homeless." King Candy said gravely. "You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"Well, no, but-" Vanellope began, but he ignored her.

"And do you know another thing about **glitches**, Vanellope?" King Candy's tone has gone from concerned to intimidating.

"Wh-what?" She asked in fear.

"They can't leave their games." King Candy whispered, and her heart stopped. _If the game ended…She would be lost forever._

"But…but then…" Vanellope could hardly find the words. "But how am I supposed to race?"

King Candy simply looked at her sadly.

"I…I _can't_?" She whispered in despair, and the King nodded sadly.

"B—But your Majesty! Racing is all I've ever _known_! I—It's in my code! I can feel it!" She cried desperately, but the King remained stoic and grave.

"I'm sorry, Vanellope." He said solemnly. "But your code hasn't been too reliable lately."

She burst into tears and started running, shattering into blue pixels and blurring back again and again. But Vanellope didn't care. Her world had already come crashing down.

It was a long time before she found the mountain.

"Diet Cola Mountain." She read the sign quietly. "Looks like no one's been here in ages." It should be an easy enough place to hide in shame. Vanellope walked the entire perimeter of the mountain and came back to where she had started. She took a closer look at the lollipops surrounding the mountain.

"Sugar-free." Vanellope stuck out her tongue. "Yuck." It was then that she realized that the step she had taken in order to taste the lollipops had left her foot _phased into the ground._

"Aah!" She jumped back, glitching in shock, when the strangest thing happened.

The triangle formed by the two arched lollipops _glitched with her._ A grid of lines phased green for the briefest second, and then flashed back to the brown cola.

"What in the blue raspberry?" She muttered, taking a closer look at the mountain and carefully stretching her hand out towards it. The brown glitched again, and she glitched with it, and she hesitantly extended her entire arm through it, following despite the blue pixilation and eventually phasing straight through the side of the mountain.

"_Wow._" Vanellope whispered, taking in the cave. She was awed by it, the massive Mentos stalactites that hung suspended from the top of the cavernous space, pointing down to the boiling hot diet cola below.

That was when it hit her.

_**Diet**_ _cola._

_**Sugar-free**__ lollipops._

They didn't belong in a game called Sugar Rush any more than she did.

_**Misfit.**_

_**Outcast.**_

_**GLITCH.**_

The tears that had dried were wet once more, and she collapsed onto the ground in a heartbreaking amalgamation of convulsing sobs and glitches.

_No wonder this place is abandoned._ Vanellope thought bitterly. _No one wants a sugar-free Sugar Rush and no one wants a __**glitch**_. _I may as well never race again._ This thought depressed her more than any other had. She didn't remember anything before that race but she had never been surer of anything than the fact that racing was in her code. She could feel it.

_Maybe if I wasn't a __**glitch.**_ She thought despairingly, looking around the cavern with newfound desperation. _I might as well stay out here, anyway. No one wants to be around a __**glitch**_.

She had only known that word for mere hours but it sliced her like a knife. She ignored the feeling, pretended not to care, pretended not to notice the glitches or the glares of everyone, the taunts of the other racers. She made a home for herself in the mountain and pretended it was a mansion, but she always knew it wasn't. She always knew it was just an old, forgotten mountain that nobody wanted, just like she was a **glitch.**

She didn't know why they hated her. All she wanted was to race.

That was why she had to steal his medal. Vanellope pretended not to see the despairing gaze of the massive character as she dashed away with the medal clutched tightly in her hands. It was close enough to trick the coin system, she knew it. Close enough to get her in the race.

Besides, she was really only just borrowing it.

Just long enough to show them all.

Just long enough to prove that she was more than a **glitch.**


End file.
